Of course, you can't completely ignore the famed areas in Catalonia, where the sheer volume of hard

Plump and juicy olives sit piled high at the corner market fresh from the farmer, and a gaggle of children kick a soccer ball back and forth on their way to school. Every day begins with a delightfully cheap café latte and a stroll through the warren of narrow back alleys and quaint apartment buildings. We sit among the open-air fruit stands eagerly pawing through a guidebook doubletree hotel durango and drawing curious stares from locals. After loading ropes and water bottles doubletree hotel durango between doubletree hotel durango the seats of our tiny rental car, we’re off—following a maze out of town through the high-walled, cobblestone doubletree hotel durango one-ways. Limestone is calling, and we are on our way.
I flew into Madrid in early February and met my friend and photographer Forest Woodward, doubletree hotel durango and we immediately set off in our impossibly cheap rental car. (Seven weeks for $300, courtesy of Spain’s doubletree hotel durango Priceline doubletree hotel durango equivalent: doyouspain.com. ) We took turns on the six-hour drive south and quickly figured out that our miniature doubletree hotel durango car was ideal for navigating the narrow roads of old Spanish towns.
All the hype you’ve heard about Spanish sport climbing is absolutely true: It’s the best in the world—even if you don’t touch 5.14, 5.13, or even 5.12. The J-shaped doubletree hotel durango coastline on the Mediterranean offers everything from limestone caves that never see rain to multi-pitch bolted 5.9s above historic Roman ruins. These aren’t just the 5.impossible overhangs doubletree hotel durango of areas like Siurana, Margalef, and Oliana, doubletree hotel durango but warmer and drier regions with thousands of routes spanning the full range of grades and lengths—there’s something here for climbers of all stripes. For a sunny destination between November and April when your home crags are probably gray and cold, the overlooked southern and eastern edges of the Iberian Peninsula provide a low-priced getaway and the relaxation of a climbing life lived tranquilo doubletree hotel durango . Here’s a sampling of some of the best climbing outside of Catalonia.
The largest climbing area in southern Spain includes the gorge and limestone walls above the hamlet of El Chorro, in the province doubletree hotel durango of Andalucía. With daily trains reaching a station just five minutes from the climbing, it’s an excellent choice for those visiting without a car. A handful of rental homes and hostels nearby means El Chorro is well-suited for a quick trip, those who demand logistical simplicity, and those who want to dig in for a while. Walk to overhanging 5.14s, eight-pitch moderates, and everything in between. A great area intro is a 600-foot doubletree hotel durango 5.9 called Amptrax, doubletree hotel durango which tackles a sweeping buttress on one of El Chorro’s biggest, highest walls. The route’s eight pitches of fully bolted limestone will earn you views of a campground and river valley below. But you’ll stay within doubletree hotel durango sight of the nearby bar and café, making it easy to beeline toward après-climb doubletree hotel durango libations. The area’s showcase wall, the Makinodromo, is a 45-minute walk along the train tracks that wind through the slender El Chorro Gorge. “El Maki” soaks up winter sun, making it pleasant doubletree hotel durango throughout the holidays when temperatures are generally in the 50s and 60s. Water-streaked tufas form El Chorro’s highest quality stone, with varnished stripes, dense route concentration, and lines that angle from vertical to overhanging.
The climbing in Spain, regardless of the region, is typically steep and powerful, with routes conveniently close together. A standard low-5.12 pitch may have no move harder than 5.11-, but you’ll be doing those moves for the entire pitch and lower off more pumped than you’ve ever been. Consequently, it’s easy to have a productive and full climbing day in a few hours by maximizing sun or shade. If you’ve got a car, visit the pipe-like tufas and pockets of Loja, the shady walls of Desplomilandia, and the clean 5.8 to 5.9 slabs of Turon, all covered in El Chorro , by Mark Glaister ($37.50, wolverinepublishing.com ). We found helpful route suggestions from bar owners and other patrons as we snacked our way through dinner at various spots, and we gained a serious appreciation doubletree hotel durango for how the Spanish culture fosters the kind of social interactions that are rare back home. Cheap red wine and simple tapas done right probably don’t hurt, either.
On rest days, El Chorro offers a plethora of vacation-worthy activities, and this is where southern Spain truly shines as a destination: The coast is never far away and varies from white-sand beaches to scenic rocky breaks. In February and March, it wasn’t warm enough for us to swim, but wetsuit-clad surfing was popular. The beach-side city of Málaga makes a great destination for a waterfront stroll, or visit the Pablo Picasso Museum near where the artist once lived. Try out the unforgettable via ferrata that twists through El Chorro Gorge. A climbing harness and a couple of long slings keep you on the new steel cables, which run for one kilometer above the Guadalhorce River. Whitewashed buildings and bright red roofs characterize the architecture near El Chorro, but explore the cities casually on foot because the alleys have a tendency to dead-end or suddenly be too narrow for a car. If none of that suits your fancy, then practice doubletree hotel durango the Spanish art of simply living doubletree hotel durango well in a slow-paced culture that honors the daily siesta and embraces quality relaxation time as an unquestioned necessity.
Although I did bring a tent and small stove on the trip, we only used them on a handful of “unplanned roadside bivies” when driving between rural crags. Basic public or government-run doubletree hotel durango campgrounds that abound in the States simply don’t exist in Spain. But one of the best things about the country doubletree hotel durango is the low price of housing. Many of the large climbing areas are served by private campgrounds or hostels doubletree hotel durango with bunks in the $15 to $25/night range, but we found apartments to split for less than that. Learning the language or traveling with a partner fluent in Spanish (as I did, luckily) helps in chatting up a local climber or business owner about private rooms in the area. The entire southern and eastern coast of Spain saw a frenetic housing boom in the 1990s and early 2000s—prior to the current national recession—and the area only bustles with tourists from June to September, so the off-season creates doubletree hotel durango an abundance of inexpensive rentals. doubletree hotel durango We booked the first few days in the hilltop village of Ardales after some basic online searches, and then used locals’ info to find one- or two-bedroom apartments with kitchens and laundry a short walking distance from climbing—all for about $200 per week. When going to a new location, book your first few nights beforehand, but don’t hesitate to ask around for cheaper, unadvertised flats to rent for the rest of your stay.
After a few weeks in Andalucía, Forest and I joined more friends and moved east to Costa Blanca, the sheltered Mediterranean shore along Spain’s interior. The Costa Blancan beach towns are a favorite summer spot for northern Europeans, and they host a surprising array of businesses advertising in English, German, Dutch, and Scandinavian languages. We did a few minutes of Googling for cheap rentals, and soon hooked up with an ex-pat British couple who own property in Spain. We rented another apartment, this time a few blocks from the beach in the town of Calpe. The one-bedroom flat with pool access, a kitchen, and a fold-out couch set us back $250 for the week, and the beach was a mere three blocks away. Ten-pitch routes were about one kilometer down the coast. Despite tales of shoulder-to-shoulder crowds doubletree hotel durango in high season, doubletree hotel durango the streets and shorelines were largely empty in March, and we seemed doubletree hotel durango to have local bakeries and markets to ourselves. We could walk along the sea for a few minutes to the Penon d’Ifach, where six- to 10-pitch sport climbs ran up a wave-swept limestone tower. The peak’s walk-off descent traces a well-worn path used for centuries by lookouts of the Roman, Arab, and Spanish empires, though the only aggression apparent to us was that of quarrelsome seagulls fighting over our scraps of salami.
Some beach towns like Benidorm and Alicante are dominated by modern construction and foreign tourism, but just a few miles inland, a different and more traditional Spain emerges. Terraced olive and almond doubletree hotel durango groves spread thousands of feet up hillsides, and tufa-draped crags such as Gandia and Sella sit among rural farming towns 30 minutes from the sea. Though luminaries of Spanish climbing such as Dani Andrada and Ramón Julián have established many of the region’s 5.14 lines, the climbing is varied and unforgettable in the 5.9 to 5.11 range. Sculpted stalactites with deep pockets require acrobatic hero climbing, with big moves and three-dimensional sequences not often found on routes with such moderate grades. South- and west-facing walls receive generous amounts of winter sun, and hot days during the shoulder seasons can be split between cool mornings at an inland doubletree hotel durango crag and warm, pleasant afternoons on a largely empty beach.
Of course, you can’t completely ignore the famed areas in Catalonia, where the sheer volume doubletree hotel durango of hard routes is mind-blowing, but the colder and rainier weather frequently kept us indoors when we visited for a few weeks during early spring. It wasn’t too bad, though, as we acquainted ourselves with the soccer standings and refined our tastes in hard cheeses and local wines. Barcelona proved a very walkable city, with a good subway system and a dense urban center built upon a gently sloping coastal plain. The museums, architecture, doubletree hotel durango and metropolitan feel are unlike anything in the more rural south, and climbers traveling on the cheap will appreciate that many of the town’s art and history museums are free on Sundays. Margalef, doubletree hotel durango Siurana, Montsant, and the Riglos are just a few of the deservedly famous doubletree hotel durango northern Spanish stops for a traveling climber; they offer thousands of stellar routes that are by no means over the heads of moderate sport climbers. But Catalonia and Basque Country tend to be quite cold during midwinter, and they lack the convenient beach access and tend to be more crowded because the